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05 June 2010

Why We Should Study Confederate History

I recently came across a piece at CNN.com by Museum of the Confederacy President & CEO, Waite Rawls, III. He asks some interesting questions in his piece:

"What about the slaves themselves? Why did many take advantage of the first opportunity to escape to freedom while others remained 'loyal' to the South? And what about the 400,000 African-Americans in the South who were free long before Abraham Lincoln came on the scene?"

And . . .

"What about the thousands of immigrants who 'escaped' the wars of Europe yet enlisted in both armies to demonstrate their loyalty to their new country? At the opposite end of the spectrum, what about the Native Americans who had been here long before any Europeans, yet allied with the Confederacy? The last Confederate brigade to surrender was composed entirely of Native Americans and commanded by Brigadier General Stand Watie, a full-blooded Cherokee."

3 comments:

Thanks for the link. It is a rather Socratic piece. The questions Rawls raises betray an even deeper question that lurks beneath the surface of this 'nation' today; one that is beginning to roil the waters of civil society: 'Just what is this nation?'

It is the same question. Asked, however, today after more than one hundred years of the question being answered, it carries within it a resounding reality: The question has never been answered. Once we began to wander from the solid moorings of our Constitution we have lost out identity. Until we return whole-heartedly to those moorings we will remain adrift in the flotsam of failing ideas; without a clue of who we really are, and what we are to be.

Hey Lawrence. I thought it was a decent piece. Though I've had my disagreements with Waite, he's got a tough job in today's PC climate. He has a lot of factions to attempt to please. There is something here for the fire-eaters to dislike and something for the PC Southern heritage bashers to dislike as well.

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